Painting: Magmatrax Tutorial

[Kurgan the Lurker]

Some folks have been asking about this tutorial lately. Unfortunately the locations that have previously hosted the article are either currently undergoing a rebuild and as such the file isn't available OR they have the article up but the pictures are missing. So I talked to Vincent yesterday and got the files and write up to post here for those who wanted to see it.

Vincent however is rather busy as he is in the process of moving so I am posting his tutorial for him.

PLEASE NOTE: Kurgan did not paint this in any way shape of form. This work is the sole-production of Boltman. Please send any questions about this to Vincent, AKA Boltman. Kurgan is just posting the tutorial up at Boltmans request.

So without further ado....

Vincent Hudon

"The Making of Magmatrax"

[Kurgan the Lurker]

Introduction

 

As I promised when I started the project, should my Juggernaut project prove successful at the Golden Demons, it would be worth writing a tutorial about it. Little did I know this project would eat over 400 hours over 14 weeks. Most of these hours were spent looking at the model, adjusting the pose, revisiting the color scheme, and learning how to paint each element, taking 2-3 attempts for each new thing. I might not taken many step-by-step pictures on how to paint each element as I walking in the dark myself, trying to nail the effect I wanted. And when I did, it was already painted... Within a year of starting the hobby, I went from

[Kurgan the Lurker]

The Concept

 

I wanted to make a Golden Demon-winning model. How? What to do? So I went online, and since I started the hobby I

[Kurgan the Lurker]

The Conversion

 

The list of bitz I used:

[*] Juggernaut model

[*] Archaon

[Kurgan the Lurker]

Juggernaut conversion

 

I had never seen much work done with Juggernauts in GD competitions, and now I know why. Though I felt the model had a lot of potential, I realized that the sculpt was horrible, with asymmetric parts, and badly sculpted finer features. I spend many hours just filing away excess and sculpting minor add-ons to try and make the model symmetrical. Even so, some things I couldn

[Kurgan the Lurker]

The Base

I wanted the Juggernaut standing atop the battelfield, looking at the puny mortals soon to be crushed. I found a natural rock, which size and shape suited my model well. It had a cleavage cut, too, from which I could exploit the recess underneath to show off my previously acquired glowing lava-effect. I had to pin the juggernaut to the rock somehow though, for solidity. I couldn

[Kurgan the Lurker]

The Champion

The Champion is where I realized how handy it is to carefully select bitz. I cut off the obliterator legs, and quickly realized that it was a perfect match. On the left side the lag was open outwards, which worked well with my Champion

[Kurgan the Lurker]

Painting Magmatrax

 

Now was the toughest step for me. I felt more at ease with converting which I enjoy a great deal, and the painting I knew would force me to step it up to live up to the conversion which I was very proud of. I knew I wanted a Magma theme, which would tie in with the rest of my army. Oh yes, this model was going to see battle. I

[Kurgan the Lurker]

Painting the Magma Scales

Using:

• Chaos black
  
• Scab red
  
• Red gore
  
• Bloody red
  
• Blazing orange
  
• Golden yellow
  

I started off by painting the magma scale on the right hind leg, giving me more freedom to try on an area I could repaint and repaint again as it was going to be partially hidden under the cloak. I started highlighting the armor in red, and then adding a scale pattern, but it looked slightly off, as the lava veins were too similar to the highlighted areas of the armor plate. Ok, let

[Kurgan the Lurker]

Painting the Plain Red Armor

Using:

• Chaos black
  
• Scab red
  
• Red gore
  
• Bloody red
  
• Red ink
  

Over the black basecoat, a thinned down version (35-40% water) of scab red is applied, in the same manner that yellow was dragged on the surface of the veins. Start the paintbrush at the darkest recesses, and drag the paint towards the brightest edge you want. In my case this generally meant starting from the top trims to the bottom ones, away from the overshadowing magma scale armor plating.

To explain this, lets take the right frontal leg of the juggernaut, right underneath the lava scale plating (leading to the claws). I apply the paint starting up on the leg, and I drag the paint down with the brush towards the claw, using this wet layering technique. Since the paint is diluted about 40% with water, little color will show at the top and more paint will end up at the bottom, this shows even more on a black basecoat. Let it dry a few seconds, and repeat the process. This time, I start putting paint maybe 1 mm below the first layer I just applied. Now this second "wet layer", once dry, won't appear to cover much either, but a little more than the first. I'll apply a third layer, again starting a little below where I started dragging the paint the previous time. Don

[Kurgan the Lurker]

Non Metallic Metal Gold (NMM Gold)

 

Using:

• Scorched Brown
  
• Vermin Brown
  
• Leprous Brown
  
• Light Yellow #010 from Vallejo Model color range; similar to 50/50 white golden yellow mix
  

Alright now, the most learning I did here. NMM had stirred amazement, wonder and a certain deal of fright since I first saw the Master

[Kurgan the Lurker]

Horns and Spikes

Using:

• Scorched brown
  
• Vermin brown
  
• Leprous brown
  
• Bleached bone
  

Though the color list is very similar to the gold, in this case, bleached bone used as a brightener changes the final look considerably. Unfortunately, the step by step pictures turned out blurry, you

[Kurgan the Lurker]

Skulls

Using:

• Scorched brown
  
• Bestial brown
  
• Snakebite leather
  
• Bleached bone
  

No Self-respecting Khorne Follower struts his stuff around the battlefield without skulls. I had a lot of trouble getting te skulls to look the way I liked. To this day I still feel I have a hard time with skull and bone colors, and particularly the way I paint them. So take my procedure with caution. I wanted to accentuate the shades on the skulls, and have a color that was bone, not yellowish or reddish like the spikes and horns seem to have. I found that substituting vermin brown to bestial brown from the mix actually helped make a more

[Kurgan the Lurker]

Juggernaut Eyes & Gems

The gem technique is probably the only technique I mastered already before undertaking this project. Assuming you are unfamiliar with it, here are my pointers, using the Juggernaut

[Kurgan the Lurker]

Miscellaneous Champion Details

 

The rider being a focal point for the viewer, I knew I had to go further and add details. The helmet faceplate was slightly plain. After a careful wet layering job of red on it, using multiple watered down layers like the rest of the red armor, I decided to add

[Kurgan the Lurker]

The Axe

 

The axe blade I decided to keep within the magma theme and paint scales, similar to the juggernaut armor. This time however, I wanted the effect to look more like a hot piece of molten lava, held at the core with scales, and then stretching into blades, cooling down towards the edges. Just like the magma scales, I started with scab red, then painted the veins with blood red, then orange, then yellow. I kept the veins wider this time around, to show off more lava heat. I then hilighted the scales

[Kurgan the Lurker]

The Fur

 

Using:

• Scorched brown
  
• Vermin brown
  
• Leprous brown
  
• Bleached bone
  

The colors for the fur are teh same as for the horns. My best results came with a basecoat of scorched brown, drybrush of vermin brown, followed with a drybrush of leprous brown. To complete the effect, I carefully applied a 50/50 mix of leprous/bleached bone, 1/3 water thinned as usual. At this stage I painted every little strand of fur, making sure to avoid the strands in the recesses and brighten the top of the folds, to show a certain

[Kurgan the Lurker]

The Powerfist Freehand

 

Once everything was painted, I wanted to still kick it an extra notch. Seeing a good opportunity to show the judges I could paint without borders, I decided to paint a skull feature on the fist. I started out with a few concept sketches with paper and pen, and once I had my basic concept, I practiced the features of the skull. I decided I should draw it a bunch of times, always the same way, to get proportions rightly repeated every time. The eyebrows were drawn first, then the cheekbones, teeth, and finally the sides of the skull. That way I knew the V-shaped

[Kurgan the Lurker]

The rest of it

 

The axe shaft was basecoated leprous brown, again 2-3 thinned layers. I chose 2 lines of highest light, one on each side, and painted it light yellow. This will be later covered but serves as bearings for now. Then, at 90 degrees from the light yellow, a scorched brown line is applied (2 in all). At 45 deg. from the light yellow (halfway between yellow and scorched brown), a leprous brown line is applied (4 lines in all). Now, with 50% thinned paint, vermin brown is applied, covering just about all the scorched brown, from each side towards the leprous brown. Using your palette, apply successive mixes of leprous/vermin, 50% thinned, to blend in the color from the pure leprous to pure scorched brown. The same is done from leprous to light yellow. Finally, once happy with the color transition, correcting and re-correcting until the blend was smooth (it sure wasn

[Kurgan the Lurker]

Painting the Lava Base

Using

• Chaos black
  
• Codex grey
  
• Fortress grey
  
• Wolf grey #47 (Vallejo Game color, like Spacewolf grey without the blue hue)
  
• Scab red
  
• Red gore
  
• Blood red
  
• Blazing orange
  
• Golden yellow
  
• Light yellow #010
  
• Skull white
  

First off, once the base was basecoated black, I drybrushed Codex grey, then Fortress grey and finally a touch of Wolf grey, emphasizing on the rocky bulges I wanted to define. Next came the lava. Using 2-3 coats each time of thinned paint (35-40% water), I applied scab red all over the untouched plastic base surface. Next came red gore, covering about 95% of the surface. At the blood red stage, I started making a pattern of warmer rivers, branching off. With blazing orange the rivers are getting warmer and the paint more concentrated in central areas. Yellow was then applied as a thin line in the center of all the river branchings, but made wider where the flow was wider or the flows met. Light yellow was then only applied at the warmer regions, where the flows met, in the center. A little bit of 50/50 skull white/water was then blended in the very center of the intersections, making pools of various sizes where the lava is at its hottest. The rings and bubbles were painted by applying thick coats of undiluted yellow around the base, to fill in the interface from bubble to plastic base, and round up the interstice. I did so instead of using Green Stuff as parts of the bubbles was pretty much inaccessible to the tools, whereas paint was simply applied on the bubble and left to sag at the base. From yellow I

[Marovingean]

:devil:

Thats all I can say.

Thanks so much! fantastic tutorial! So many useful tips and it mst have taken hours to prepare the tutorial (and the model)

 

M

[Iacton Qruze]

I loved this piece ever since I saw it on CMON, but I never noticed the powerfist freehand... that's absolutely brilliant :wink:

 

I'm glad I could finally see this tutorial, as I've wanted to make one similar to it for myself, but didn't know what all the pieces were.

 

 

Thanks very much!

[Boltman]

Thank you so much Kurgan for taking the time I lack and repost this for the community! :(

 

For the curious I am moving to another province, new job and all, and in between boxes I'm working on my next GD project (Toronto). This one so far looks promising, I'm experimenting with a lot of new techniques. This year the challenge is real metallics. It's B&C compatible, but it's not in Power Armor... /inscrutable scheming off :wink:

 

 

Boltman

[mario]

How about linking to this tutorial here from the FAQ as the original links seems to be broken?

 

By the way: Would it be an good idea to either link to some of the best internal tutorial articles from the FAQ or to just create one sticky topic in the tutorial section for this? This could include stuff like links to the hundreds of "How to paint colour x?" tutorials. I know there is a search function but it's not as sophisticated as a Google/Yahoo search and an index of good articles could probably remove some of the recurring topic (mostly new users, but sometimes people who are missing a keyword in their search) that always get answered with reference to the search function or direct links to five or six relevant topics.

[Psychologic]

Beautiful Boltman. Every time I look at the model I see something new. The axe is the most striking thing to me, and making it a double-headed one really lets it stand out.

 

Kurgan, wonderful job on putting this pack up again. Always enjoying to see this tutorial.